My Least Favorite Advice: Just Write More Books

Every time I scroll through author Bluesky, or any social for that matter, I see the same piece of advice served up like it’s the crispy taco deluxe of publishing success:

“Just write more books.”

Oh, thank you, wise marketing sage. How very novel of you. If only someone had told me sooner that all I needed to do was write more books! Forget marketing. Forget newsletters. Forget building a reader base, targeting your genre, or even writing a good book. Just keep writing them. Stack them high, baby. Eventually, success will trip over one.

Here’s the problem: if people didn’t like my first book, what makes you think they’ll love my second? Or my seventh? You think my prose levels up like Kratos with every draft? It’s not XP; it’s existential despair.

I’ve written seven novels over twenty years. That’s nearly half my life, and for what? To be told the answer is to just write even more? What’s the magic number then? Eight? Ten? Twenty-three? Ten?

And let’s not pretend that writing a book is easy. You don’t accidentally leave a manuscript on the counter next to the grocery list. Writing is the hardest and most mentally destabilizing hobby you can monetize for a $2.09 royalty. Every book takes months, sometimes years, and that’s if you don’t have a full-time job, a family, or any semblance of a social life. So yes, let me just crank out another one while I’m also fixing the print bleed on my last one and praying Amazon links the damn editions correctly.

This advice is lazy. It's condescending. It's the literary equivalent of telling someone who’s unemployed to just get a job. Or better yet, telling someone who’s drowning to just swim harder. Thanks, Coach. Didn’t think of that.

Here’s a tip: if you're going to give advice to other writers, make it actionable. Tell me how to run a successful ad campaign. Show me how to build a reader magnet that actually works. Explain the nuances of genre-specific blurbs that convert. Don’t stand there and smugly say, “Oh, just keep writing books and the readers will come.”

Will that be before or after I’m dead?

Look, I was going to write more books anyway. That was already the plan, you effervescent ding dong. That’s what writers do. That’s not advice, that’s a condition. What I need help with is getting people to read the damn things.

So the next time someone gives posts just write more books, go ahead and smile. Nod. And then go back to doing what you were already doing: writing, yes, but also learning, marketing, and building your own damn path.

Because write more books is not a roadmap. It’s a cop-out.

At least for me, anyway.